French

My French is only good enough to order food and buy things with, not to philosophize on the complexities of the goth subculture in a very loud cave.

A house and a home are not two extremes. One is not a foil to the other. They lie on the same line — a crooked one.

The exhibit, “Alexandre Dumas’s Afro: Blackness Caricatured, Erased, and Back Again,” at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, or BAMPFA, grapples with the issue of identity and the mixed race experience through the historical depiction of Alexandre Dumas and his family.

My meraki tried to trickle out, endearingly disobedient, forming beads of sweat in place of stories and saltwater tears where poetry begged to be.

Every week, I would enter the French classroom with more confidence than I did the week before. My professors were impressed by my progress. When I raised my hand in class, my spoken French sounded so natural and so refined. My only secret was that my progress had little to do with their pedagogy. 

Stromae’s production lifted attendees into another dimension — one where the ordinary is celebrated, tough times are acknowledged and language or cultural differences do not hinder our ability to form a community.

When you see my name on a name tag or written somewhere, I get that you’ll likely use the English pronunciation. You can’t know how I say my name until I tell you.

Like all 15-year-olds do, my French beau and I eventually ventured past French kissing and together explored uncharted territory. This also sucked.

It is embarassing but undeniable that the only erotic things about the film are the volcanoes themselves; it doesn’t help that much footage of the stretching, throbbing, folding and spewing masses is set to French lounge music.

From worrisome to wholesome, here are UC Berkeley’s stories and legends that you might have missed on your campus tour.