1001 Lives

Telling peoples' unheard stories...

Chasing Beauty

Dress, Photo Credit: Allison Pan Why do people care so much about a dress? It is only cloth. It cannot speak, think, or remember. Still, people spend months searching for the right one, especially for a wedding. They want to be beautiful, of course, but perhaps they also want something more. They want to be seen in a certain way. For Cassat, this question did not first appear as a philosophical question. It appeared as a wedding dress. Cassat grew up in Utah. When she was

Ben Xin

3 hours ago5 min read

Chasing Beauty

Ben Xin

3 hours ago5 min read

My Grandma's Hands

Competition Writer: Xichen Wang My Grandma's Hands, Artist: Allison Pan The first thing I see when I think of my grandma is her hands. They are not the soft, smooth hands of a young woman. They are wrinkled, dotted with faint age spots, and the skin is thin, like the pages of an old book that has been read too many times. But to me, those hands are the safest place in the world. They have held me through every storm, guided me through every uncertainty, and woven the quiet

1001 Lives

Jul 144 min read

“Who says it had to be this way?”

Yielding to the world, for good reason, is much easier than standing against it. Narratives (which are often true) tell us about the harsh realities of our world: that perhaps hopes are impossible to fulfill; that perhaps your dream career just can’t sustain your life; that injustice is inherent to our human existence. This doesn’t mean one’s existence has to be miserable. Reconciliation is a recurring theme across our essays for good reason: many people are able to come to t