Losing Yourself in Diasporic Nostalgia

Stephanie H. Shih's ceramic memories of the old Lower East Side

I don’t know why I don’t take comfort in images and items from the past as much as I do, especially if it’s a past I didn’t experience first-hand. The present is definitely not so great with, you know, everything, but the past was hardly perfect. I can only guess that when members of my family came over to America, they likely thought it was definitely …