Author / Rachel Butler
-
![]()
The Cuban Regime’s Historical Fear of Literary Dissent
“Within the revolution, everything; outside of it, nothing.” With these words pronounced in June of 1961, Fidel Castro dictated a course for Cuba’s intellectuals that would prove all too literal in the years to come. Writers who became disillusioned with the revolution and fell out of favor with the socialist regime, such as Heberto Padilla…
-
![]()
Young Adam
He delighted in the waxy skins of lemons, Secretly scratching, sniffing, breathing in, As his mother hurried him along, Clutching grubby fingers. She left him by the apricots, To buy the chicken for dinner, stay right here! The deep violet of the eggplants called to him, And he could not resist. Roaming among mountains of…
-
![]()
The Rhetoric of Dehumanization
On the evening of April 19, 2013, crowds in Boston cheered, waved American flags, and shouted, “USA! USA! We got him!” as Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was taken into custody. Mayor Thomas M. Menino was recorded saying that he hoped the court system “throws the book at [Tsarnaev]” by giving him the harshest sentence…
-
![]()
Book of Life
Colored light dapples empty Pews, wood worn to splinters by children Scraping the shiny surface with fingernails, edges Of books of prayer, who really was praying, we asked Laughing, peering at each other behind skirts, over hats, rolling marbles on the floor. Adam and Eve looked down frowning At us, apple still uneaten and glowing…
-
![]()
Discovering the Green Line
In kindergarten at my Jewish elementary school, my class took a “trip to Israel.” Our miniature chairs were arranged in two columns split by an aisle, and a TV was rolled in front of them, prompting hushed excitement. The lights were dimmed; a tape was slid into the VCR, and a blue sky dotted with…
-
![]()
Media Polarization and Finding the Truth in Our Politics
Can we put on something less biased?” grumbled my grandfather as the evening news began to play on the TV. At first I did not understand what he meant. The MSNBC Nightly News had always seemed universal to me, its theme song and anchors’ voices ingrained in my idea of America for as long as…
-
![]()
My Approach to Academics, In Review
The following are two pieces I’ve written over the past few years that, when put together, provide a chronicle of how the pursuit of multidisciplinarity has shaped my college experience so far. The first is an editorial that I wrote for my high school newspaper during the spring of my senior year. The second article,…
