Crimson staff writer
Elyse D. Pham
Latest Content
To Revel in An Asian Body
As I reflected on my own relationship to racial fetishization, I discovered that it was overwhelmingly forged through ambiguity: ambiguous interactions, ambiguous responses, and ambiguous feelings. The instances that prompted my immediate, visceral disgust felt secondary to the instances that left me uncertain, on the precipice of being shoved into a tired cultural script but clinging to the hope that I’d hold my ground.
A Summer Soaked in Nostalgia
I always loved who I was in LA; the city seemed to mark clear periods of growth, the backdrop of the coming-of-age movie that I believed to structure my life. But this time around, endless days alone replaced collective effervescence.
A Night With ASS (Adams Seance Society)
A voice pierces the silence, inquiring if there are spirits there with them. They wait with eager ears. Suddenly, it comes — a tap on the walls — faint and indistinct, but enough to send the room into an uproar.
How Not to Die Alone, According to Relationship Expert Logan Ury
This counterintuitive revelation — that the road to love can be paved with scientific rationality — is the foundation of Ury’s book, as well as her career more broadly.
The Sky's the Limit for Asa Akira
Whether porn reflects existing racial stereotypes or creates a monster of its own is a classic chicken-or-the-egg question. Porn and racism, most likely, engender a mutually reinforcing cycle. But Akira’s individual responsibility within this cycle is, at most, ambiguous.
A Diversified Debauchery
Final clubs were made for white men. Now, people of color — who were never supposed to step through their gates at all — are carving out communities inside them. They’re drinking their alcohol and smoking their cigars. They’re reveling in these spaces, instrumentalizing the white men’s mansions for pure fun.
A New Kind of Porn is Coming
In audio porn, there’s something symbolic about being directly addressed as you, specifically, are guided to your climax. For all intents and purposes, you’re the main character — regardless of the dynamics in the story.
Homecoming: Chill Girls
… often, what we’re looking for in these romantic relationships is what we find in each other.
The Power and Powerlessness of Remote Activism During COVID-19
“You’re scattered all over the country, all over the world. You’re literally taken away from the community that you’re trying to organize in,” says Zoe L. Hopkins ’22, incoming president of the Harvard Organization for Prison Education and Advocacy. “The meaning of community organizing just changes completely.”
Research at the Intersections of COVID-19 Crisis Response
The AAPI COVID-19 Project, housed at Harvard’s Department of Sociology, comprises a team of eight researchers from multiple universities. Under Shaw’s leadership, they seek to investigate how COVID-19 — as both a virus and a social construction — is impacting Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander (AAPI) individuals and communities.
Scratching Beneath the Surface with LaShyra Nolen
After a year and a half at the Medical School, LaShyra Nolen feels at home. “Even though I don’t necessarily see people that look like me all the time, I still feel like my HMS community and my class are some of the most beautiful, most supportive, most amazing people ever,” she says.
From Indie to Institution
At Schlesinger, you study zines; at Papercut, you read them. Sitting in Schlesinger’s sterile, white-walled reading room, there’s a dissonance between the environment and the zines’ anti-establishment nature.
A Radical Weapon
As the heat swells, an orange haze consumes bras — and the curling pages of Playboy magazine — in a plume of rising smoke and a purge of female frustration.
Every Friday Night
Sometimes, I pretend I’m in one of those getting-ready-montage movie scenes, like the songs from Spotify’s latest pop playlist are actually my life’s perfectly-synced backup track.
Lipstick and Legislation in Obama’s White House
When Andrea Flores was elected as the first Latinx president of the Harvard Undergraduate Council in 2008, her lipstick posed a problem.
