There lies a certain tension that
comes with rekindling a return to
in-person learning after nearly a
year and a half of screens and stone-
cold breakout rooms. Tension over
catching the right bus and finding
the right class and showing up not
too late and not too early and finding
the quintessential sweet spot in every
lecture hall and even the best, most
private places to cry because to cry is to
be human. And where do we go when
things get to be too much and too fast?
Where do we seek refuge and comfort
and, mostly, predictability in a world
that is anything but predictable?
Where do we find the most perfect
clean-cut lines and palatable sweet
things that make us feel not too much
and not too little?
We first start with finding it all in
Emily Mariko.
Most TikTok “For You” pages have
been bustling with the classic salmon,
rice, Japanese mayonnaise, sriracha,
avocado and seaweed bowl that found
itself skyrocketed into mainstream
popularity through lifestyle vlogger
Emily Mariko. At first, there wasn’t
very much to like about Emily Mariko,
because who cuts their vegetables
that close to the screen and why is
she leaning down that low in the
frame to butter a slice of toast and
microwaving her rice with an ice
cube and how does she manage to
cut her peaches and pears and onions
just right without one ounce of mess.
It simply isn’t natural. Her counters
are sparkling clean and she doesn’t
just shove groceries into the back of
her fridge like the rest of us and hope
they don’t rot. She even organizes her
eggs by size and cuts her carrots in
perfect little slices and stores them in
mason jars of water and quarters her
kale and fish in squeaky clean plastic
bags and bins. And perhaps more
than anything else, with women like
Emily Mariko, and more so, with the
inception and commodification of life
as a means of capital — to share and
sell aspects of living — there comes
first dislike, then sullen bitterness
derived from intimidation because to
cut your farmer’s market bread loaves
into neat little slices is to sometimes be
grievously and shockingly threatened.
Then soon after, there follows
reconciliation, peace, a willful grace
even, because Emily Mariko had
mastered the most arduous, daunting,
taunting burdens of life, the icky,
sticky tasks we sometimes cannot
bring ourselves to do, and there is joy
in watching someone else accomplish
them in the most refined, beautiful,
polished way possible.
We have been embroiled in a
global pandemic for nearly a year
and a half. I lost my aunt last week
to the virus because it has not yet
finished wreaking violent havoc.
And the return to college is no
different because it can quickly
fray and fall apart as things pile up
onto other things and other things,
and even more so, at a school like
the University of Michigan with
the Leaders and the Best looming
around every corner, it becomes
even more difficult to convince
ourselves that imperfection is okay,
to sometimes reconcile with falling
short and failure. And women like
Emily Mariko help us put one foot in
front of the other.
6 — Wednesday, October 13, 2021
Michigan in Color
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com
By August Miller
©2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
10/13/21
Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle
Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis
10/13/21
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
Release Date: Wednesday, October 13, 2021
ACROSS
1 Mires
5 Loving smack
9 Kind of coach or
jacket
13 “Bolero”
composer
14 Spots to clear up
15 Not at one’s desk
16 *Progressive Era
muckraker
18 Socially aware
19 Tundra deer
20 Plane engine
type
22 CNN anchor
Burnett
23 “Your turn”
26 Whack, biblically
27 Stephen of
“Citizen X”
28 *12-time
35-Down All Star
and TV analyst
30 Wall St. “500”
32 PreCheck org.
33 Crave, e.g.
34 *Australian
swimmer with five
Olympic golds
38 Tijuana home
41 Gen-Z
sweetheart
42 Prompts
46 *First daughter
and senior
adviser to #45
50 Fig. of interest to
a dietitian
51 Slangy
“Absolutely!”
52 Petro-Canada
competitor
53 Leave early
54 Appliance
connection,
briefly
56 Mass-times-
velocity
measures
58 Swimming great
Torres
59 ’00s Britcom
about an
underappreciated
computer support
squad ... or what
the answers to
starred clues
comprise?
62 Early garden spot
63 Muscat’s land
64 Book with roads
65 Easy gait
66 X-rated material
67 “__ she blows!”
DOWN
1 Shady part of
town
2 Of a certain
reproductive
gland
3 Arrive
4 Thick slice
5 Japanese
dance-drama
6 Party bucket
item
7 NBC skit show
8 Lead-in to made
or love
9 Blades that cut
blades
10 WWII flag-raising
island
11 Faux glow
12 Evaluation with a
capital E?
13 Kitchen cutters
17 Outback hoppers
21 Outdoor grill
residue
24 Amasses
25 Very, very
28 Pub drink, briefly
29 Roofing goo
31 “Unfaithful” Oscar
nominee
35 Hoops org.
36 London gallery
37 Yipping adoptee
38 Fortress
39 Much of
guacamole
40 H.S. course
pioneered by
Stanley Kaplan
43 Crunchy bar stuff
44 Battle waged on
Wikipedia
45 Tossed courses
47 The NCAA’s
Wildcats
48 Govt.
moneymaker
49 Academic
53 Sailor’s quarters
55 Sporty muscle
cars
57 Future MD’s exam
60 “Let’s see ... ”
61 Lac contents
SUDOKU
2
4
8
1
9
3
7
6
8
6
9
9
3
4
1
5
5
2
7
6
9
3
8
6
2
5
9
“I love you still,
I have since
the start, and
I always will.
From: 143”
“Judas the stray cat,
if you’re reading this
please come inside
the house. It’s too
cold outside.”
WHISPER
10/06/21
ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:
11 Minuscule amount
22 Winter warm spell
31 Do a number, say
“Kim Kardashian West understood
the
assignment.”
“Genius.
Pure
Brilliance. She swallowed them all.”
“Iconic.” Top-line celebrities and fans
used these words to describe what
they thought of Kim Kardashian’s
questionable outfit for the 2021 Met
Gala. If you’re unfamiliar with her
ensemble, allow me to paint you a
picture: Kim wore black from head
to toe, literally. Every inch of Kim’s
body, including her face, was covered
in a black Balenciaga T-shirt, with
two long capes dragging feet behind
her. In a sea of the glitz and glamour
of the Met, Kim’s plain but entirely
bold number stood out like no other.
The deepness and darkness of her
outfit contrasted with the bright and
vibrant looks of the Met Gala like
night and day — almost to the point
that Kim’s outfit seemed bat-like and
scary at first glance.
The theme of the Met was “In
America: A Lexicon of Fashion,”
an effort to highlight emerging
American designers and “sentiment
over practicality”. This left lots of
ambiguity surrounding the meaning
behind Kim’s outfit and how it fit into
the theme of the event — what was so
“American” about wearing something
that seemed to represent nothing at
all? Other celebrities paid tribute to
historically iconic American figures:
Kendall Jenner recreating Audrey
Hepburn’s crystal gown look from
“My Fair Lady” and Nikkie de Jager
paying homage to American LGBTQ+
activist Marsha P. Johnson. Some
contend that Kim’s outfit represented
how she proved to be a recognizable
figure despite being covered head to
toe. Some thought that because Kim
is so overly sexualized, her outfit was
used as a point to prove that she can
still be critiqued while being covered
entirely. Whereas others, like me,
concluded her outfit to have no
significance to the theme at all.
As a Muslim woman who observes
the
hijab
and
has
experienced
firsthand
discrimination
for
representing my faith, I find the
response to Kim’s Met Gala ensemble
to be awfully hypocritical. Kim’s
outfit has sparked a large discussion,
ranging from predictions for its
“elaborate meaning” to praise for
its “unique” and “original” nature.
However, this conversation never
included buzzwords like “oppressed”
or “barbaric” the way buzzwords like
these are presented when it comes
to conversations regarding hijab.
Naively, I thought Kim’s outfit would
be regarded as a “miss.” Other than
the fact that I felt as though it was
simply ugly, I couldn’t wrap my mind
around any sort of significance it
could have possibly held. But could I
say I was surprised when her praise
began flooding my social media feed?
No. After all, when Muslim women
are covered, their practice is regarded
as “third-worldly” and backwards.
Kim’s outfit demonstrated that it is
Muslim women, and Muslim women
only, who face such bigotry. She
was quite literally unable to see in
her outfit, proving that when an
A-list celebrity takes the practice
to an even more extreme level, they
are regarded as fashion icons. It
screamed the double standard at play,
and I couldn’t believe how explicit
the hypocrisy made itself out to be.
Why are you shocked? It’s always been
this way.
But my excessive reflections in
trying to figure out where to channel
my frustrations made me realize
that my anger wasn’t aimed at Kim’s
outfit — but rather the greater
conversation of anti-Muslim bigotry.
Kim Kardashian just happened to
be the one to reiterate the societal
hypocrisy that surrounds the hijab
and other religious coverings. In
reality, Muslim women, especially
those who wear the hijab, have borne
the greatest burden of anti-Muslim
discrimination.
Visibly
Muslim
women, such as those who wear
the hijab, niqab or burka are at the
frontlines of knowing what it feels
like to be Muslim in the west. It means
confronting
daily
discrimination,
humiliation
and
the
feeling
of
constant fear of what wearing a
hijab in public could possibly lead
to. It means waking up every day
and actively making the decision to
wear the hijab while knowing much
too well that it sets you apart, and in
the West, this distinction tends to be
negative.
In southern Vietnamese culture, it is
common to refer to your siblings based on
their birth order. The rankings start with
“hai,” which means two, so the oldest sibling
would be __ hai, preceded by either “chị,”
meaning older sister, or “anh,” meaning older
brother. To reference younger siblings, we use
“em.” Translations for this piece: hai = two, tư
= four, sáu = six, tám = eight.
Step 1: It’s May 12, 1958, when you are
born. You are the eighth child, with four
older sisters and three older brothers. Your
name is Nguyen Hoang Hung, son to a dad
who is a teacher and a mom who stays at
home but sometimes helps her brother-in-
law at his herbal store. You get along best
with your older brother whom you call “anh
tám,” since he’s the closest to you in age.
By the time you are born, your eldest sister
will already be 17, your second eldest sister
will have died when she was eight or nine
and your eldest brother will have passed
away when he was young, but you won’t
remember specifics because you weren’t
even born yet.
Step 2: Your sister whom you call “chị tưư”
takes you to the Christian elementary school
every day, and you spend time after school
playing with anh tám because there aren’t
many neighborhood kids to play with. You
enjoy playing with your dogs in the evening
and sleeping in your mom’s bed at night.
Step 3: By the time you are 18, you start
worrying about escaping your home country.
Your anh sáu has already embarked on his
journey before you, so now, you’re going
alone. November 1980 is when you’ll have
to try for the first time. At night, you make
your way to a set location along with other
hopeful citizens to be led by a person who
will take you to the boat. No one will show
up. You do not return home, so instead, you
go to a farm in the Rạch Sỏi village, staying
at the home of your parents’ acquaintances,
where you go from a city boy to a farmer boy.
You do what they do: fishing, planting rice
and yard work.
Step 4: Across the next five months, you
make five more unsuccessful attempts.
After every failure or false call, you return
to the farm, but you have to blend in, so you
pick up smoking and drinking even though
you despise it.
Step 5: When April 1981 comes around,
you leave for your sixth try but before you
can make it to the boat, the police start
chasing you and the others. It’s nighttime
so it’s hard to see. You try to hide in a ditch,
but it doesn’t work; an officer grabs you by
the shirt and beats you and jabs you with the
butt of their gun in the ribs and stomach —
an experience so painful and traumatizing
that you will still have nightmares about it
when you are older and safe.
Step 6: For about two months, you are
in a labor camp. Your head is shaven. Little
scabies start to take over your body, and
it hurts to sit or sleep. Every night you eat
cabbage soup which, too, traumatizes you
to the point where, in the future, when your
wife cooks it for dinner, you eat it only to
make her happy.
Step 7: You are let out of jail because there
is not enough room for the new incoming
prisoners. You go back to the farm until
August of that year where you return
home to your parents and anh tám because
the rest of your siblings are on their own
journeys. Your father knows a man who
needs extra help at his pharmacy, so you go
there to work. From 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., you are
at the pharmacy — aside from lunch when
you bike home and your father teaches
you English as you eat. You sleep at the
pharmacy, too, because your parents fear
that you will be caught if you go out at night.
Step 8: On April 27, 1982, you leave
the pharmacy for your seventh, and
finally successful, attempt. After staying
at a set location until the night of the
28th waiting for the boat, it comes and
starts making its way deeper through
the water. On the morning of May 1, you
and 70 others go from the fishing boat
onto a Norwegian ship carrying liquid
natural gas. You are on the boat for six
days before the boat comes to port at
Chiba, Japan, on May 7, 1982. After going
through the immigration office, you get
on a bus for 24 hours that takes you to
Nagasaki, where refugees tell officials
what country they want to go to; they
are then split off to different provinces
accordingly. You choose America, so you
stay for two weeks before heading to Seto
City in Aichi Prefecture for the next two
years in a refugee camp.
Kim Kardashian’s Met Gala look was not
iconic, it was hypocritical
How to be my dad
REEM HASSAN
MiC Columnist
HANNAH NGUYEN
MiC Columnist
Design by Janice Lin
Courtesy of Sarah Akaaboune
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
Emily Mariko arrived when we
needed her the most
SARAH AKAABOUNE
MiC Columnist
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com