Note from the Editors

“Here’s a comfort in telling yourself something over and over, something that fundamentally stays the same yet has the ability to transmute itself.“—”Souvenirs for Strangers” by Roukia Ali

There’s something so fundamental about repetition, renewal, reinvigoration—from the familiar three-arc structures universal across stories to the biological rhythm of night and day, hunger and satisfaction, aging and reproduction—reprise creates meaning purely from motion: cyclic, reminiscent, resistant, committing to tell this story again and again until it matters. As long as it matters. As long as we live to tell it. Because, as Joan Didion writes, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”

Reprise is how we construct meaning—how we give ourselves tomorrow.

According to Noralee Zwick’s “poem in which I cannot rely on my hands,” this process is holy. According to Aldrin Badiola’s “On Fatherhood,” this process is familial. According to Antrey Bradley’s “Don’t Focus on Me” and “Distant Memories,” this process is blurry, mistake-filled, but ultimately a culmination of everything we have ever known.

Reprise “transmutes itself” (“Souvenirs for Strangers” by Roukia Ali): it grows as we grow, it spins and spins like the orbit of the earth we never notice, like the stolen chickens of summer (“How We Live” by Claire Yang), it spins and spins until the piece of paper is folded fifty times and we are two-thirds to the sun. Now thousands of miles from home, gazing at a truncated cosmic wonder with (delivered by Amazon Prime with incredible punctuality) (“漫游 (Roaming)” by Catherine Xue), we are promised another chance to breathe. Another chance to begin.

So rejoice in these reprises, our Asterisks. Rejoice that five years later, we are still writing and reading and loving, from our team to your screen, from your stories to our hearts. Thank you for blessing us with your stories. Thank you for being our reprise.

Follow us on Instagram (@aster.lit) for more literature, artwork, and cross-cultural connections, and we can’t wait to read you next.

We love you. Your voice matters. Keep telling stories.

With all our love,
Emma Zhang (Co-Editor-in-Chief) & the Aster Lit team