“I’ve become so dependent on my black-eye-shadowed look that I have trouble imagining myself otherwise”
The author. Photo-Illustration: Stevie Remsberg/Smeeta Mahanti Self/Reflection is a week of stories on the Cut about how we feel, versus how we look.
There’s the easy answer I’ve given from the start, anytime I’m asked about the change: I explain that This is true, if incomplete. Just more than two years ago, I was in particularly low spirits, having labored almost daily for eight-plus years on a first novel that, for all I knew, would never leave my laptop. Any novel is a prolonged act of faith, and my ability to believe was weakening. “Are you still writing?” people asked, gently.
And it’s not possible, I suppose, to talk about how I elect to look without mentioning racism. I inhabit the body of an Asian woman, which means I’m also, at times, particularly likely to be thought pliant, submissive, willing to please. I’m just trying to be polite, to be kind, but here I am, smiling and receptive, and what this can mean is that I get underestimated.
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