When I was three years old, my family folded Brazil in our luggage and moved to the United States. Every year since, we’ve unfolded it again — sometimes...
I was sitting at a wooden two-top facing the door, working through a burger and a Diet Coke, when a couple arrived carrying the January cold in on their...
What happens when one of the East’s and one of the West’s most famous heroines are given a second chance at life, by each other’s sides, in the same...
By Emily Moon, Beacon Contributor
/ December 11, 2025
When most people hear the title “KPop Demon Hunters,” they imagine a neon-colored, chaotic, over-the-top action comedy that is nothing more than glitter,...
By Josie Arteaga, Deputy Kasteel Well Bureau Chief, Opinion
/ February 26, 2025
Every February, holiday festivities begin in Bolivia, and my home becomes a different country. Carnival de Oruro, for Bolivians, is the most important...
As ten-year-old Mercedes Jacobs sat in the Havana airport in 1962, the wait was long and her clothes were heavy. Already classified as an adult, she was...
Radiohead’s 1995 alternative chart topper, “Fake Plastic Trees,” is about my Christmas tree.
The eponymous fake Chinese rubber plant lives rent-free...
The hat looks heavier than it feels. Colorful flowers cover the right side of my head, while thin chains dangle on the left attached to metal medallions....
When meeting someone new, the first thing you learn about them is their name. A name serves as an identifier, signaling who someone is. A person’s name...
By Rachel Choi, Multimedia Managing Editor & Chief Copyeditor
/ April 3, 2023
Food is necessary for the body, but it’s also necessary for the soul—and I don’t mean that in a metaphorical way. So many of my most cherished memories...
By Meg Richards, Deputy Projects Editor
/ February 15, 2023
Pamela Anderson, a media personality who took the ‘90s by storm, is finally telling her own story. Last year, Hulu released a biopic series called “Pam...
By Diti Kohli, Former Editor-in-Chief
/ December 12, 2019
My high school boyfriend’s dreary old minivan was a staple in our driveway. He hugged my mom when they crossed paths in public, watched football games...
Race is complicated—that goes without saying. Anyone, especially people of color, who just read the first sentence, knows that race can affect everything, from...
By Diti Kohli, Former Editor-in-Chief
/ April 10, 2019
I stood calmly on the moving escalator at the Peoria Civic Center in Illinois. I was a senior in high school competing at the Speech State Championship,...
While working in the journalism office last week, my boss asked me to make a list of a few common sounds in Chinese names that professors might find...
Junior Cassie Poirier identifies as a first-generation college student, yet she didn't know what that meant or the challenges it entailed until freshman...
One day, as I sat struggling with a reading assignment, my roommate simply asked, “What’s up?” I wasn’t sure how to reply. In China, I never studied...