What is Taylor Swift’s Reputation?

Content warning: mention of sexual assault I was thirteen years old when I got my first Taylor Swift album: Fearless: Platinum Edition. I've been hooked ever since. Back then I was an eighth grader with a lot of insecurities who desperately fit in. Now I’m a college senior who still carries some of the same…

Tragedy, Family, and Identity in Verse: Jason Reynolds’ Long Way Down

“Beef / gets passed down like name-brand / T-shirts around here. Always too big. / Never ironed out.” Content warning: discussion of death, gun violence     Young adult author Jason Reynolds published three New York Times bestsellers in 2017: Miles Morales, a novelization of the black-Latinx Spider-Man; Patina, second in a series of contemporary novels about…

The Strangest Part of Stranger Things

The second season of Stranger Things is missing something: though the characters capture our hearts, the show continues skirting around difficult or political questions. Netflix’s science fiction-horror phenomenon is set in small-town Indiana, with a government facility’s experiments putting residents at risk. Why is Stranger Things so appealing? Is it the kids, the throwback tunes,…

It’s Never Too Late for a Classic: A Wrinkle in Time

Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time is one of the most famous children's books out there. It's my mother's favorite childhood book and possibly her favorite book ever. Unquestionably a classic. Yet somehow, I didn't read it until I was twenty (also known as about a month ago). This book has been sitting on my hallway…

All Aboard the E-Reader Train

If you asked me six months ago my preference between ebooks and physical books, I would have said physical books, of course. There's something satisfying and almost intimate about holding a book in your hands, turning its pages, sticking a bookmark in when you have to pause, and perhaps underlining or note taking. I knew…