There’s a magnificent turn in Zou Jia’s essay on the complications of the selfie in which a casual-seeming photo of a girl and her pet cat—Zou includes the screenshot—is held up as an example of online authenticity against an avalanche of edited, plastic beauty shots. Later, after Zou gives us a “Selfies Without Editing Contest” that only winds up enforcing traditional beauty standards, we return to the cat-girl’s photo for a closer look: the text accompanying the photo is her handy list of tips for taking a truly authentic selfie. We’re left to wonder: do the tips mean she’s generous, or fake, or both? Can you tell someone how to record their most authentic self? To answer, Zou settles on the trap of self-objectification—one driven not by the selfie taker’s tips or tricks, it turns out, but by the comments of everyone else.

This tension lies at the heart of the smart student work in this year’s Hundred River Review. Alongside Zou’s essay, we have Guo Zhiqing writing during the terrifying early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and arguing forcefully against then-U.S. President Trump’s racializing of the disease. Chen Kuntian carefully dissects the stigma attached to rural children of migrant workers, struggling to find their way in classrooms as their parents are forced to toil in cities far away. Finn Bader signs up for Tinder to explore the purported shallowness of dating economy, only to uncover both new networks and old desires, and Li Qinci deftly swings the double-edge sword of Han dynasty writer Ban Zhao’s Lessons for Women to re-see the gender politics of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. In each essay we see a young writer using research and a good question to tell the story of an idea or self or community that will not be foreclosed by likes or limits laid by the world beyond. In the Writing Program at NYU Shanghai, we know this intellectual curiosity, hustle, and strength will power these and all our students through the rest of their academic careers. We are also certain that the skill of crafting a convincing, well-researched argument will serve them in any path they follow after leaving Century Avenue.

But we also harbor the hope that good writing here and across our Writing as Inquiry and Perspectives on the Humanities classrooms will grant our students the critical eye and questioning minds that will help them better not only themselves, but the societies around them. Consider the heartbreaking image of the left-behind child Chen cites in his essay: “When the show started, all the other kids were lifted above by their parents… so they could still see what’s going on out there.” The child interviewed remains on the ground, unable to see. Chen argues for a world in which we respect both child and working parent, and then extend a hand ourselves. We at the The Hundred River Review concur: there is so much we all struggle to see. In these pages, may we see the lifting begin.

Sincerely,

Dan Keane and Chrystal Ho, The Hundred River Review Editorial Board