Beina Xu is a Berlin-based writer, producer, and visual artist. Her writing has been published in The Common, Jezebel, Southern Humanities Review, SineTheta Magazine, and Deutsche Welle, among other outlets. Her essay film Forget Alberto For Now (2020) premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam, and has gone on to win several awards. Her work has been supported by the Berlin Senatsverwaltung, the Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, and the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. She was a recipient of the 2023 Tin House Scholarship, and will be a 2024 artist-in-residence at Headlands Center for the Arts. Find her on Instagram @auslaender.salat.

INSIGHT

Bonus Child

By BEINA XU

It’s easier to trash fairytales and racism than it is to face the simplicity of my conundrum: that I’ve inherited the defunct reality of a stranger’s manifest desire.