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A Letter from the Editor
A Letter from the Editor
Happy summer everyone! At long last we have all returned to (hopefully) familiar, sunny, summer abodes. Or at the very least if you still reside in Cleveland, I hear that the rains finally subsided to be replaced by the heat we all wished for during April. Already a few weeks into this vacation and I think I can sufficiently say that after daily catnaps, too many cups of caffeine and countless lie-ins I am... still constantly tired. Sleep deprivation appears to be the gift that just keeps giving. But alas, hopefully by the end of my 4 months away from a college campus, I'll have stored up enough "sleep credit" to be able to power through all the academic reading in the world. For now, I lie in wait for the day that I no longer harbor a coffee addiction and can finish works of classical literature without falling asleep.
While free from the literary requirements of the classroom, our English Honors Society members can't keep themselves away from a good book. This month's newsletter features a collection of us with the stories we are drawn to for pleasure! Additionally, in honor of the past month of May, this edition introduces the writing of two diverse authors in celebration of Asian and Jewish-American heritage. Perhaps you, our dear reader, may take inspiration from this variety of works, or perhaps you may conclude that we are all wildly boring. If so, feel free to share your thoughts with us (contact us here) and let us know what we should all be reading next! I invite you all to join us this summer in taking a journey down memory lane to the days of summer reading challenges. My challenge to you is this: read (at least) ONE book, front to back. Cover to cover. If you have access to a local library, thrift store, or neighborhood lending library, check it out for physical copies of something new. I am a firm believer in the magic that comes with the feeling of the page as you flip to find out what happens next and hope you too may find joy in detaching from a screen. For "bonus points", experiment with finding a favorite spot to read outside for a true recharge away from technology.
In addition to staying connected through reading from our respective corners of the Earth, here at Sigma Tau Delta many of us are also drawn together by a love of writing. This past month a number of our members & classmates were awarded annual English Prizes and our editorial team is ecstatic to congratulate everyone on their fantastic submissions! This month we proudly present pieces of writing by many of these aforementioned award winners, from prize-winning compositions to new projects! I hope that today's Opinion pieces may bring a smile to your face as they did mine. From eliciting a chuckle to leading us to reflect on our times at Uni to introducing new diverse music (shout out to our monthly album review by Ivan), these short essays continue to delight. Furthermore, our prolific Creative Endeavors team once again impresses me to no end and I am incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to share their wonderful assembly of beautiful, raw, experimental writings. If you are like me and missing your friends across the country, or perhaps just looking for an activity to occupy your time that doesn't require reading perfect prose, try your own hand at journaling! Whether observing the world around you or creating your own universes, you never know what you might discover.
And finally, if this is all too much reading for your taste, our home page concludes as always with a set of fun comedic strips by Susie Kim (Managing Editor, Class of 2025). I thank you all for checking in with us this June for our second edition (!!!!) and can't wait to write to you all again soon :)
With love from the West Coast,
Charlotte (Charlie) Goyal, Class of 2025
Editor in Chief and External Relations for ΣTΔ
What's everyone reading this summer? →
Asian American History Month Feature:
Asian American History Month Feature:
selected by Tiffany Mei ('25), DEI officer
selected by Tiffany Mei ('25), DEI officer
About the author: Celeste Ng is a writer who moved to Shaker Heights, Ohio when she was 10. Her parents immigrated from Hong Kong in the late 60s. She has an English degree from Harvard, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan. Her latest release Our Missing Hearts, is a dystopian fiction novel released in 2022. Her first novel, Everything I Never Told You, actually won the Amazon Book of the Year award! You can read more about the author or her novels on her website: https://www.celesteng.com
Excerpt from Our Missing Hearts:
“So now, out of the blue: a letter from his mother. It looks like her handwriting – and no one else would call him that. Bird. After all these years he forgets her voice sometimes; when he tries to summon it, it slips away like a shadow dissolving in the dark.
He opens the envelope with trembling hands. Three years without a single word, but finally he’ll understand. Why she left. Where she’s been.
But inside: nothing but a drawing. A whole sheet of paper, covered edge to edge in drawings no bigger than a dime: cats. Big cats, little cats, striped and calico and tuxedo, sitting pert, licking their paws, lolling in puddles of sunlight. Doodles really, like the ones his mother drew on his lunch bags many years ago, like the ones he sometimes draws in his class notebooks today. Barely more than a few curved lines, but recognizable. Alive.”
Jewish-American Heritage Month Feature:
Jewish-American Heritage Month Feature:
selected by Elizabeth Miller ('25), Treasurer
selected by Elizabeth Miller ('25), Treasurer
photos of Israel by Elizabeth Miller
photos of Israel by Elizabeth Miller
A Note from Elizabeth:
May is Jewish-American Heritage Month, where the United States celebrates the contributions Jewish people have made to the country in culture, government, history, science, and more. But, American Jews are not only connected to each other within the country- we are also connected to other Jews all over the world, most of whom are concentrated in Israel. In the following poem, Tourists, we see the impact tourists have on the Jewish people in Israel, and therefore Jews all over the world, when they visit Israel to see the history of the people who have lived there. We hear the perspective of the Jew who has spent his whole life in the holy city of Jerusalem, and has become invisible to the tourists, who only want to see the tombs and memorials. All the Jewish man wants is for the tour guide to point out that he is a person too, with his own story, so that the tourists will understand that they are in a land where its history has created a new generation of people. This new generation is spread out all over the world, mostly including the United States, where the American Jews take pride in having their own story, and it being appreciated like any other cultures’. Therefore, this poem gives us a glance into how Jews can be perceived, or even ignored, but Jewish-American Heritage Month battles with this, and promotes the remembrance and celebration of Jews all over the world.
Tourists
From Poems of Jerusalem by Yehuda Amichai. Tel Aviv: Schocken Publishing, 1987.
From Poems of Jerusalem by Yehuda Amichai. Tel Aviv: Schocken Publishing, 1987.
Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at the Holocaust Memorial,
They put on grave faces at the Wailing Wall
And they laugh behind the heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on the top of Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust over our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.
Once I sat on the steps by a gate at David's Tower. I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists was standing around their guide and I became their target marker. "You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!" I said to myself: "redemption will come only if their guide tells them, 'You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important: but next to it, left down and a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family.'"
strips by susie
strips by susie
texting with tiffany & claire (1)
drawn by susie kim
susie's summer survival
drawn by susie kim
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