The sobbing was faint at first, echoing to me through shut doors. I curiously wandered into my parents’ room in no rush. My mind was still half-asleep, my eyelids drooping, my movements sluggish. At this point, the sun had not even risen. The door creaked open, revealing my parents and brothers anxiously huddled on the bed. Their shoulders shook, and their breathing was unsteady. I immediately noticed the glow of Mom’s phone, and the motion flashing across the screen. I approached my family cautiously, my presence noticed but not acknowledged. What was going on? Why was my family ignoring me? Why were they crying? The bitter taste of dread flooded my mouth, as even more thoughts raced through my head: Someone probably had COVID! It was 2020, the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I was positive one of my relatives was sick, causing this commotion. But who? And how?! We had all been so careful! We wore masks, we stayed home, we even wiped down our groceries. How could the virus have squeezed past all those precautions? I slipped onto the mattress, discreetly swallowing a growing lump in my throat. For a few moments I stayed like that, as silent as a mouse, my ears trying desperately to hear, my mind racing to put the pieces together. I was not used to being left in the dark, much less the shadow of pandemic that now engulfed the world. Finally, after a couple of quiet minutes, I heard a familiar voice saying something about my grandmother, Mita. Suddenly, a new ominous possibility emerged as I recalled that Mita was “high risk.” She had been living with stage 4 cancer for many years now. I remembered the colorful scarves she proudly wore on her head, her talks with Mom about healthy eating and cutting out sugar. Was her cancer acting up now of all times? Did she get COVID? Somehow, within seconds, the situation progressed from bad to worse. Beads of sweat formed on my forehead, despite the fan gently buzzing nearby to combat the summer heat. I continued to sit there, paralyzed in my own worry, as I overheard more bits and pieces of the tragedy: the paramedics could not come to help her… my uncle drove her around for hours before finally finding a hospital that would not turn her away… the doctors were now on their 7th attempt to resuscitate her. And as I listened to all that, as my dread and confusion intensified, and the sobbing turned into wailing, nobody turned around and hugged me tight, promising that it would be okay. What an unforgiving, harsh way for an 8-year-old to wake up. I ran out of my parents’ room, overwhelmed by all that was happening. I launched myself under my covers, screwed my eyes shut, and prayed harder than I had ever prayed before. It was the first time in my life that I really, intensely, legitimately prayed… And I did not just pray. I begged God for Mita’s life, tears finally finding my eyes, feeling the full weight of fear and sadness and pain straining my body. Dad entered my room, his head bowed low, and his shoulders slumped. My gaze met his, my heart somberly hopeful, as he opened his mouth to speak. It was a mere whisper, soft and delicate, but it shook my room – “Mita’s gone…” No, no, no! How could this be happening? How could this be happening to me?! My flicker of hope, a dim light, faded, and all that remained was a deep cavern of black. I tried to breathe, but it seemed impossible in these depths. So, this is what drowning feels like. I choked on my tears as I became fully aware that I would never again feel the joy of my long story times with Mita. Mita Mita video-called me each week, settled on her corner couch with a cup of piping hot coffee and a fancy notebook. She sat poised, as usual, sometimes with her legs crossed, sometimes with her legs propped up on her table, but always prim and proper. She would listen intently as I read my stories, oftentimes for hours on end. She would nod, she would take notes, she would ask questions about my crazy characters and their equally crazy adventures. No matter how cringey my stories got, she appreciated them wholeheartedly. She told me over and over again that I was her favorite storyteller. She told me my stories made her heart happy. Mita was supposed to call again so I could share my most recent story with her. But that was now an impossibility. How was Mita gone… how was she no longer with us… on this earth… smiling, dancing, and brightening the atmosphere? She was so full of life, even in her sickness. She was so strong. She was so special … so special to ME. She made MY heart happy. How could I ever write again? My family and I were in shambles, confined to grieve alone, literally locked down, stuck, and still reeling from the other blows the pandemic had hit us with. Surely my sadness could not be shared with anyone; so much heartbreak already existed among us, and around us. And so, for the next few years, I held on tight to my sorrow, and carried my burden alone, wrapping it tightly around my heart, vowing to never let it loose. A few months ago on my eleventh birthday, I stumbled upon an old shoebox. Inside lay cards and letters from years past written to me. As I rummaged through the stack, a dainty, handmade card caught my eye. I recognized the beautiful penmanship instantly — the scribbly cursive that could have easily come straight out of a calligraphy manual. In my hand was the last card Mita ever wrote to me before her tragic death. I hesitated. I braced myself for what I thought would be a crushing weight of emotions that
Young Bloggers
Live Fast, Die Young, Be Wild, and Have Fun: Chloe Ruan, 13, Reviews Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die
It all started during the summer of 2021, in July. July was for swimming. It was for sleeping in, playing outside, going to the Alamo and the lakes and wherever you wanted because you had all the free time in the world now. It was for getting away with watching TV-14 National Geographic documentaries on sharks (it was Shark Week) and seeing The Little Mermaid II for the first time — both of which I watched in a fit of hazy boredom one otherwise unremarkable morning. July was for falling down a rabbit hole of melancholia and intoxicatingly tragic glamor. It was for coming across the album that will forever be engraved in my memory: Born To Die (2012). I cannot overstate how strange the cover looks even now. The singer seems plastic, with her honey-brown hair set in perfect waves around her symmetrical face and a red bikini top underneath a white collared shirt. Her pink lips are pursed, and her eyelids are crescents of peach-colored skin among mascara-thick eyelashes and carefully-sculpted brows. There’s a barely-discernible car and some nondescript fences and trees in the background. Her name hovers in the cloud-dotted sky in white picket-fence letters — LANA DEL REY, while at the bottom, in smaller letters of the same font, is the album name. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, but it’s always disturbed me, too. I was twelve when I first laid eyes on it that July. She looks like an alien, I’d thought. Born To Die. How do I describe Born To Die? The songs are dreamy and sentimental, bittersweet as summer. But it all feels right. Lana’s voice contains pure, soulful yearning, with an old-Hollywood, American-summer quality and pretty crying notes interspersed with smooth, swooning tones. She often sings about loss and hope, love and abuse, romance, friendship, fame, depression, and mortality. She knows that “sometimes love is not enough and the road gets tough” and that ultimately we were born to die — but she also knows that the streets are paved with gold and that life is capable of being sweet like cinnamon. Born To Die was the first record I ever bought. It was the entire reason I even got a record player. Opening it after returning from Target was like walking through the pearly gates — like unleashing the power of the universe. In some songs she sounds like warm caramel, singing about her love, life, and American dreams. In others, she throws herself into the whole hopeless heartbreak-themed persona — she is, after all, the self-described “gangsta Nancy Sinatra.” She’s Miss Daytona, the scarlet starlet, Elvis Presley’s daughter (she says it herself: “Elvis is my daddy, Marilyn’s my mother / Jesus is my bestest friend”). She sings miserably about how she wishes things were different (“Dark Paradise”), describes her underage escapades at boarding school (“This Is What Makes Us Girls”), and wonders why she’s unhappy even though her life is perfect (“Million Dollar Man”). The album is partially autobiographical, too — in the same way some of Elvis’s last songs (“Moody Blue,” “Unchained Melody,” etc.) express the tragedy and depression that surrounded his final years, Lana sings about the experiences she’s had in her two-and-a-half decades of life. She knows what it’s like to be a rebel — to be in bad relationships, to be so emotionally drained that she just doesn’t care anymore, to be hurt by someone she sees as the Messiah, to have to leave behind everything she’s ever known. To get into trouble a lot, to be taken advantage of, to go through a philosophical crisis at a young age, to get famous when it’s least expected. Come and take a walk on the wild side, let me kiss you hard in the pouring rain . . . you like your girls insane. During the summer of 2021, I was under the impression that I was cursed. All my best friends always ended up moving away and leaving me alone. I missed my people, my childhood. Nothing had been the same since I’d finished elementary school — in other words, I was mourning the past. And in Born To Die, so was Lana. I felt I was the sad queen of a bygone era, of a golden age that everyone but me had moved on from. And Lana felt that way, too. She and I were the same. To me, a little twelve-year-old reminiscing on my old life, Born To Die was everything. It still is everything. It’s summer, it’s love, it’s nostalgia. It’s a reminder of the best time of my entire life. And so there will forever be a special place in my heart for the blessing that is Born To Die.
Turning Red, Reviewed by Tonia Wu, 11
Last spring, as a fifth grader, I watched the movie Turning Red for the first time. I was excited to see this movie because it was written and directed by Domee Shi. Shi was born in Chongqing, Sichuan and later moved to Newfoundland, then to Toronto in Canada. While researching her life, I learned that she watched many Studio Ghibli and Disney films throughout her childhood, inspiring her to be the storyboard artist for films like Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur, Toy Story 4, and Incredibles 2. In 2018, she wrote and directed her first short film, Bao, and in 2022, when Turning Red was released by Disney/Pixar, she became the first female solo director (Brenda Chapman co-directed Brave) of a Pixar film! While watching the movie, I felt particularly drawn to Meilin, a thirteen year-old girl living in Toronto whose life in some ways seems reflective of Shi’s complex international heritage. Turning Red depicts Meilin as she grapples with her identity as a straight-A student desperate for her mother’s approval and her rebellious desire not to seal her wild “panda soul” according to tradition. In the film, the panda soul tradition dates back to Meilin’s ancestors who turned into pandas whenever their emotions ran free. Over time, generations learned to suppress their panda souls through participating in a ceremony for sealing their red panda souls into a pendant or another type of jewelry that could keep the soul locked away. One of my favorite parts of the movie was Meilin’s own ceremony, when the red moon appears to mark this transformational time of her life. First, Mr. Gao, who is a regular guest of these ceremonies, draws a circle into the dust, and then all of the women begin chanting from their hearts. As they chant, Meilin’s body hovers a few feet in the air, and then her soul lifts into a kind of dreamland. From there, she can walk into a mirror that allows her panda soul to separate from her human soul, all while allowing her to return to the real world after the ceremony is over. After that, her soul is supposed to be safe to live in a piece of jade jewelry, but Meilin defies this expectation by deciding not to seal her panda soul into eternity. By refusing not to seal her panda soul, Meilin has the power to unleash her inner panda whenever she isn’t feeling calm, a fact that is made more extreme through anime. The clouds, for example, turn a poofy pastel pink whenever her panda soul is aroused, like when Meilin is angry at her mother or another classmate, and also her eyes mimic oversized anime eyes whenever she sees a boy that she likes. By using anime, the film effectively shows what it is like to be a tween who is not only hyper aware of her surroundings, but who is also warring with her inner demons as she transitions from a child into a teenager searching for social acceptance. Overall, I think Turning Red should be seen as a major accomplishment for Domee Shi, because it both gives voice to her own experience growing up in Toronto as an awkward tween and represents the universal experience of transitioning out of childhood that I think a lot of teenagers can relate to.
