Yale Daily News

This special issue of the Yale Daily News Magazine showcases the winning works from the 2023 Wallace Prize.

May 29, 2023

A thing I learned when my doctor tried to hide her concern over the bulging goiter on my neck: doctors are bad actors.

May 29, 2023

While the bigger and prettier buildings accommodated the mass exodus of city dwellers seeking out better school systems and lower rent, middle-income Asian immigrants called 1111 River Road home way back since the 50’s. Despite the rapid modernization that enveloped it, 1111 River Road never bothered to remodel, even though it was readily losing value. It stood firm in its dirtied white brick walls, ripping purple rugs, window air conditioners, and underequipped gym. It found confidence in the old ways amidst a changing society, very much like my Dá Dá (grandpa).

May 29, 2023

Professional home organizing is not for everyone. It’s a physically demanding job; organizers are often expected to carry boxes, haul glassware, and move furniture. It can be monotonous, with hours spent in the same room positioning and repositioning the same objects over and over again. It can be frustrating, as customers frequently make requests the organizer knows their clients will regret (and then, two hours later, they’re forced to redo entire sections of the home because the customer did indeed regret said choices). In other words, professional home organizers need to be strong. They need to be patient, they need to love their work, they need to smile easily and be slow to anger. In other words, they need to be Mary.

May 29, 2023

Jobs for Writers hadn’t existed before Moira was in her mid-twenties, out of work and in something like love with men who never called their mothers. She liked loud music and spicy curries, cloudy springtime, and Christmas (secretly). She had graduated college a few years prior with more B’s than A’s and so much debt it felt made up. Mostly she just missed her mother.

May 29, 2023

"My clients are either masochists or pussies,” says Tat Tito. His green-and-white trucker hat bobs behind his customer’s belly. The gun purrs. I roll around a bit on my chair. The pause is filled with bass-heavy music: Sade, 112, Montell Jordan. Medical smells—soap, alcohol, bleach—singe my nostrils. Buzzbuzz, buzz, buzz. “Which one are you?” I ask the man on the black salon recliner.

May 29, 2023

She took the small, white pill. She looked at his pleading face, so large and angular, and hoped it would start to shift around in her eyes. It did not. This was not one of those pills, one that would mutilate anything outside of her. The pill was meant to scrape out a mistake, a liquid exchange he wanted to take back.

May 29, 2023

When we are both tired, Halmeoni gives me a foot massage. “Today I work so hard,” she tells me one day, knuckling the bottom of my foot. “I cook kalguksu for next week so your mama can just—relax. And then I clean. Whole house.” She slaps my heel for emphasis. Her hair catches the light in small curls.

May 29, 2023

A few months ago, I petitioned to take time away from Yale and help my mother get rid of the dinosaurs. I was tired of my classes, tired of waiting each semester, with dread or hope, for the New England cold to arrive and then recede. Meanwhile, my mother needed an extra pair of hands with farm chores.

May 29, 2023

The Mississippi Delta has always smelled of wet soil. The Delta itself is the shared flood plain between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. It encloses the northwestern region of the state of Mississippi, and its location makes the Delta land known for its richness.

May 28, 2023

The Wallace Prize is the most prestigious independently awarded undergraduate writing prize for fiction and nonfiction at Yale. Winners will receive a substantial cash prize, […]

March 9, 2023