By Analaura Amezquita
Whittier, CA
A 17-year-old girl is browsing through social media when she sees a picture on a boy’s feed with a caption that reads “What a savage.” The image? A girl laying on her stomach facing away from the camera and a friend who says, “Rape her.”
By Williams Mejia
New Brunswick, NJ
The National Football League is an American obsession. In 2016, more than 111 million people watched Super Bowl 50. Television networks pay the league billions of dollars to broadcast games. Americans are nearly united in their love of football. But it comes at a cost.
By Amina Diakite
New York City, NY
When President Trump enacted a travel ban during week of his inauguration, the controversial move shocked the world. Few places felt the impact more than Princeton.
Ten percent of the undergraduate population are international students. On January 27, a number of them found themselves in limbo, unsure whether they would be able to return to campus, let alone the United States. Immediately, Princeton pounced. Princeton and 30 other colleges joined a court brief challenging the travel ban and condemning the action.
By Aleksandra Wicko
Chicago, IL
Drifting away from traditional Hollywood romance, ‘The Big Sick’ takes a refreshing and hilarious approach to a conventional form and does justice to complicated real-life relationships. Based on the true story of Kumail Nanjiani and his wife Emily V. Gordon, the issue of interracial relationships provides a compelling narrative that includes a big secret and a medically-induced coma.
By Alana Burke
Detroit, MI
Initially, the idea sounds absurd. Of course black people can’t appropriate African culture, because that’s their heritage. Appropriation is defined as the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture. Now the question becomes whether black Americans have the right to wear traditional African garb and immerse themselves in African cultural practices.
By Yasmina Cabrera
New York City, NY
In American culture, it’s common to depict issues of race through a token person of color – a generally one-dimensional character who goes against all stereotypes of their ethnic group and whose sole purpose in the story is to further the character development of the racist protagonist. Think Sidney Poitier in ‘In the Heat of the Night,’ Wilmer Valderrama in ‘That ’70s Show,’ and Samuel L. Jackson in anything.
By Abby Dotterer
Casper, WY
Parents are usually perceived as loving, caring people who can do no wrong — at least to their children. But what happens when you learn your father, the one who changed your diapers and went to each of your football games, wasn’t who you thought he was?
“Appropriate,” written by Princeton University alumnus Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, is a play that follows an Arkansas family who gathers to divvy up their recently deceased father’s estate. The line delivery sometimes felt cheesy and over-performed, and the storyline is as unresolved as the issues it represents.
The Princeton Summer Journal 